The Groningen University Fund, the Department of Arts, Culture and Media, the Center for Gender Studies and ICOG are proud to host a Workshop and Encounter on Gender Dynamics in the Music Industry followed by a lecture by Dr. Robin James (University of North Carolina at Charlotte / Women’s & Gender Studies).

Friday, June 23rd, 2017 [14:00-18:00]

Academy Building, Heymanszaal / Broerstraat 5, Groningen

Program:

[14:00-15:45] Workshop with professionals from the music industry (the first hour is an interactive workshop followed by 45 minutes of panel discussion with three or four professionals from the music industry)[15:45-16:00] Short break[16:00-17:00] Keynote Lecture by Robin James[17:00-18:00] Concert Cistem Failure + drinks

Panelists Workshop:

Kelsey Coockson

Kelsey Coockson started her career in music with an internship at Caro Emerald’s label Grandmono. After that, she became an editor and talent scout at NPO 3FM, searching for gifted musicians that could be crowned ‘3FM Serious Talent’, strengthening their musical spines with support of the radio station. She then left to finish her Bachelor in Musicology at the University of Amsterdam. After graduating, she came to work as an A&R/Creative Manager at Universal Music Publishing Benelux (UMPG). Having had many mentors in the music industry who gave her the chance to flourish under their wings, she’s now leaving the major publisher to pursue her dreams as an artist, start her own business and hopefully inspire young women to take a stand for themselves while coping with the music industry.

Marjan Wynia

Marjan Wynia has worked as a marketing & communications manager in the creative industries for many years. For the last 11 years, she has worked for the GRAP foundation, an organization dedicated to helping talented music artists, and she has worked as a freelance copy writer. She also co-founded female network organization Chicks in the Bizz and is researching the gender dynamics in the music industry. ​

Tamar Tieleman

Tamar is Radio DJ and Voice Over for several channels and brands. As a DJ she has worked for Amsterdam FM, KX RADIO, 3FM, NPO Radio 1 and NPO Radio 2 & NPO Soul and Jazz. Her voice over skills have been used for brands such as Microsoft, The Pill Reminder and De Heus. In addition, Tamar is the host of many music contests and festivals such as De Grote Prijs van Nederland, Hemelbestormers, Amsterdamse Popprijs, Art Rocks, Dutch Valley Festival, Amsterdam Woods Festival, Eurosonic Noorderslag Festival and Amsterdams Bevrijdingsfestival

Anne Carson’s “The Gender of Sound” studies the women of classical Greek literature. They are presented as “a species given to disorderly and uncontrolled outflow of sound.”Emphasizing the relationship the Greeks drew between sonic harmony and social harmony, Carson’s analysis of gendered sounds hinges on the concept of sophrosyne, i.e., “the masculine ideal of self-control,” of which “verbal continence is an essential feature.” Updating the concept of harmony upon which sophrosyne is based to reflect 21st century acoustics rather than Pythagorean geometry, I argue that neoliberal post-feminism uses sophrosyne to police the behavior of women. White post-feminist noise maintains a harmonious society, one tuned to synthesize the range and variability of noisy interactions from which white supremacist patriarchy will reliably emerge as signal. Conversely, those who call out systemic sexism and racism are accused of the same flaws attributed to overcompressed music: invariant loudness. I conclude by contrasting sophrosyne with Katherine McKittrick’s concept of deomonic calculus. Unlike sophrosyne, which is an organizing principle designed to forsee the future, the demonic is an organizing principle that abandons the relations of subordination that make statistical forecasting and homo economicus’s predictability rational in the first place. I will show several ways the music in Beyonce’s Lemonade uses demonic calculus to craft an alternative, asophrosyne femininity.

Bio

Robin James is Associate Professor of Philosophy at UNC Charlotte. She is author of two books: Resilience & Melancholy: pop music, feminism, neoliberalism (Zer0, 2015), and The Conjectural Body: gender, race and the philosophy of music (Lexington Books, 2010). Her current book, The Sonic Episteme: acoustic resonance and post-identity biopolitics, is under contract with Duke University Press. Her work on feminism, race, contemporary continental philosophy, pop music, and sound studies has appeared in The New Inquiry, Noisey, SoundingOut!, Hypatia, differences, Contemporary Aesthetics, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies. She is also a digital sound artist and musician. She blogs at its-her-factory.com.

Concert by Cistem Failure

To round the day and event series for this year off, the Anarcha-Feminist-Folk-Punk band Cistem Failure will perform at 17:00. The location will be announced soon.

This event is sponsored by the Groningen University Fund, the ICOG, the Arts, Culture and Media department and the Center for Gender Studies.

The Department of Arts, Culture and Media is proud to host a lecture by Professor Dr. Oliver Seibt (University of Amsterdam, Cultural Musicology) on the theme of “Visual-kei, a variety of Japanese rock music that originated in the early 1990s”.

This edition of the Music Matters series features the Irish folk band ‘McScallywag‘. This band stands out for their joyful repertoire and their ability to create a pub athmosphere wherever they’re playing.

Concert: May 12, 13:00 in the Harmony Cafeteria.

Travelogues from the world behind the mirror: Where “Western” visual-kei fans actually head to when boarding a plane to Japan.

Visual-kei is a variety of Japanese rock music that originated in the early 1990s under the influence of American and European glam rock and glam metal. While until the turn of the millennium, Japanese pop and rock musicians rarely attracted Western audiences, in the late 2000s a second generation of Japanese visual-kei bands succeeded to win over a considerable fan base also in the Americas and in several European countries. With the “Visus” in Germany, an entire youth subculture formed up, based on the fascination especially of young German women for Japanese visual-kei. Though the bands by now also give concerts in Europe on a regular base, to most “Visus” a trip to Japan still means the ultimate fulfillment of their desire – even if Japan as a concrete location is of almost no importance in the band’s oeuvres, while quite a lot of the bands’ videos and record covers refer to historical European sceneries.

Based on a multi-sited field work in the Tokyo visual-kei scene and the German “Visu” scene, the presentation tries to answer the question what is the proper destination of those fans who actually sally out and invest a huge amount of time and money in a trip to … yes, whereto?

Bio

Oliver Seibt is assistant professor for cultural musicology at the University of Amsterdam since 2016. Before holding positions as interim or guest professor for ethnomusicology at the universities of Cologne, Frankfurt am Main, and Vienna, from 2009 to 2012 he worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Heidelberg’s Cluster of Excellency “Asia and Europe in a Global Context”, where he was in charge of the musicological research project “Creative Dissonances” on the globalization of East and South Asian popular musics.

His research focuses on (the global spread of) Japanese popular music (e.g. “Asagi’s voice: Learning how to desire with Japanese visual-kei”, in Vocal Music and Contemporary Identities, ed. by Christian Utz and Frederick Lau, Routledge 2012, or “The (musical) imaginarium of Konishi Yasuharu or How to make Western music Japanese”, in Towards a global history of music, ed. by Reinhard Strohm, Ashgate forthcoming) and music in everyday life (Der Sinn des Augenblicks: Überlegungen zu einer Musikwissenschaft des Alltäglichen, Bielefeld: Transcript 2010).

The Department of Arts, Culture and Media is proud to host a lecture by Dr. Koos Zwaan (Inholland University of Applied Sciences / Media, Culture and Citizenship) on the topic of “Digital natives in the music industry? How the Internet ecosystem is creating value for artists.”

The second edition of Music Matters 2017 also offers a Lunch Concert with the Groningen Student Big Band, a big band ensemble conducted by Dr. McGee featuring students living in Groningen. Together with two vocalists the big band will present a few songs of their repertoire ranging from Fly Me To The Moon, made famous by Sinatra and the Apollo missions, to classics such as Why Don’t you Do Right?, written by McCoy and Morand.

Concert: Friday, March 17th [13:00-14:00] at Harmony Cantine.

Digital natives in the music industry? How the Internet ecosystem is creating value for artists: a discussion with researcher Koos Zwaan.

The rise of online platforms has been a game changer for the music industry. “Downloading, video and music streaming, social media and crowdfunding have opened up new alleys for the music industry” writes Dr. Zwaan. This is a well accepted fact among scholars in the field and certainly well discussed in academic publications. What is less discussed, however, is how to make a profit from online presence.

The Inholland University of Applied Sciences, collaborating together with BUMA Cultuur, the Dutch music export organization, has focused on this question in a current study. Koos Zwaan will offer insights into the study and elaborate on the research methods. Furthermore, the current business model(s) will be sketched out, inviting discussions and questions, not only asked by researchers but also everyone interested in understanding our contemporary music industry.

Bio

Koos Zwaan (1979) studied Communication/Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam and received his PhD after completing his dissertation on the career development of Dutch pop musicians. He is currently associate professor of Media, Culture and Citizenship at the Inholland University of Applied Sciences. He is one of the co-editors of a volume on the global television format Idols, entitled Adapting Idols: Authenticity, Identity and Performance in a Global Television Format (Ashgate, 2012, co-editor Joost de Bruin) and in September a co-edited volume, entitled The Asghate Research Companion to Fan Cultures (Ashgate, Sep 2014, co-editors Linda Duits & Stijn Reijnders) will be published. His research interest include popular music and popular culture, the music industry and new media. He is also a board member for the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) Benelux branche.

The first edition of Music Matters 2017 also offers a Lunch Concert with the singer/songwriter Karam Shebat, a fine singer blending European and Syrian traditions, formerly featured in both the Arab Idol and The Voice of Holland competitions.

Concert: Friday, February 17th [13:00-14:00] at Harmony Cantine.

Building an Interdisciplinary Life in the Sonic Arts: A Discussion with Writer/Editor/Instrument-Builder/Composer/Performer/Sound Installation Artist Gayle Young

Gayle Young describes the design and construction of new instruments and sound installations using inexpensive industrial materials and found objects. Her sound installations and compositions place those materials in new contexts and invite public participation through an exploratory approach to sound. Young presents pre-recorded environmental sound such as train horns and ocean waves in unfamiliar and artificial auditory frameworks, so that listeners hear them from new perspectives. Taking a similar approach to text and vocal sounds she brings attention their acoustical characteristics.

Instrument with 24 strings, the Amaranth.

Metal percussion instrument, the Columbine.

An outdoor installation, title is Castorimba.

Young will also discuss the long-term implications of publishing projects based on oral history, from her biography of Hugh Le Caine, a key innovator in electronic music, to interviews with composers published while she was editor of Musicworks Magazine.

Gayle Young studied contemporary music with David Rosenboom, Richard Teitelbaum, and James Tenney at Toronto’s York University, 1974-1977, and was soon presenting concerts as composer and performer of microtonal music on acoustic instruments of her own design, both stringed and percussion. Young has created several sound installation works, the most recent being Castorimba Suspended, in which over a hundred resonant sticks chewed by beavers are suspended from trees so that visitors can play them. She also composes for orchestral and electronic instruments, and pre-recorded soundscapes. In March 2016 her composition “Departures” was premiered in New York by the ten violists of the Flexible Orchestra. On Feb 13th her piano work “As Trees Grow” will be premiered by Xenai Pestova at Café Oto in London. She will be a guest composer in Den Haag Feb 20-24, where she will speak about her music and attend rehearsals for a concert of her compositions.

Young has written extensively on contemporary music and sound arts. The Sackbut Blues, her biography of Hugh Le Caine (1914-1977), Canadian inventor of electronic music instruments, describes interconnections among physics, acoustics and music from a mid-twentieth century perspective. Young is the publisher (and former editor) of Musicworks Magazine. Her compositions have been broadcast and performed internationally; she has received numerous awards and commissions, most recently a prestigious fellowship with Civitella Ranieri Foundation, for a six-week residence in Italy, 2014, where she completed As Trees Grow, for piano and optional electronics. While resident in Duntara in Newfoundland in 2016 Young recorded the interactions of water and shoreline using two hydrophones, identifying patterns of underwater pitch and rhythm that will contribute to new compositions.

The Department of Arts, Culture and Media together with the Department of Theology, Religious Studies and Jewish Studies is proud to host a presentation and workshop by Professor Dr. Philip V. Bohlman (University of Chicago, Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Medien Hannover) on the theme of “Jewish Music and Its Others.”

In my presentation at the University of Groningen I shall illustrate the critical importance of non-Jewish music to Jewish music studies with several case studies from my own ongoing research. I shall draw especially from a current project in disciplinary and intellectual history, “Jüdische Musikforschung in Berlin 1900–1950,” and from my work as the Artistic Director of the cabaret, New Budapest Orpheum Society, which dedicates itself to the performance and recording of Jewish cabaret traditions. In both cases, I explore the ways in which non-Jewish music influences Jewish musical thought and practice, not as binaries between Self and Other, rather as more complex and expansive ways of understanding modern Jewish history as a part of modern history, locally and globally. In the course of my Groningen presentation, I shall make a case for redeploying the disciplinary boundaries between Jewish music and its Others as critical to the study of music in modern religious and musicological studies.

We invite you to Music Matters XII on April 7th featuring a lunch time concert at 13:00 in the Harmony Cantine (upstairs behind the cafe). The concert features Erasmus student musicians of the ESN Music Project and a lecture at 17:00 by Dr. Maarten Michielse of Maastricht University entitled Learning from Bastard Pop? Moving Beyond Subversion and Piracy in the Mashup Community. We look forward to seeing you there.